The Glade 4.0

You know what you are Taskiss?

You're a damn dirty Dramadary.

/nod.

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Holy shitsnacks!

(apologies in advance)

Hey, not MY fault you have a savior practically designed to appeal to sadists, masochists, pain-sluts and bondage fetishists!

Anyway, 'He is Risen' always makes me think of canned biscuits.

You don't get it that veiled accusations of brainwashing and sexual humor are "not ok" in a forum that isn't for debate andisn't the "free fire" area? This is somehow an "agenda"?

There is no agenda. This is fear of some strawman that doesn't exist.



There's an entire forum where it doesn't matter if it's a problem or not, and really, it shouldn't be that hard to figure out what's "going to be a problem" in a thread where most of the people are just saying "Happy Easter". Don't pretend like people just start going off about nothing.



His penis is just as sacred as the rest of him in every culture, the rest of the world just doesn't need to focus excessive attention on his penis. Why the Italians do is beyond me. Ok, so you found it funny.



Well, guess what? We do protect "hatred" in this country, even if we don't protect physical expressions of that hatred. It doesn't matter if you don't want it protected; it is. There's plenty of countries around the world where far worse than having your cat gutted will happen to you if you ARE Christian. In any case, what you're doing is singling out a few violent, **** people and few more assholes and using them as an excuse for "fears" that somehow the fringe elements are going to take over. PRetty much the same thing as Monty "feared" and really no different than fearing whites because of the KKK or all Italians because of the Mafia



Yes, exactly. You're ficating on the actions of a few douchebags, and using it as an excuse to be "concerned" about "them". Hasty Generalization comes to mind. Has it ever occured to you that some of us who ARE Chrisitians get treated the same way as YOU do because we aren't the right kind according to the douchebags? No? Why, when it's so much easier to just lump it all together as some "Christian agenda".

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

10 yard penalty for misspelling Dromedary!! 1st down!

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"Said I never had much use for one, never said I didn't know how to use one!"~ Matthew Quigley

"nothing like a little meow in bed at night" ~ Bruskey

"I gotta float my stick same as you" Hondo Lane

"Fill your hand you son of a *****!"

I spelled it that way on purpose.

It was a pune or play on words

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Holy shitsnacks!

*popcorn*

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

I'm not afraid of the non-douchebags. YOU don't worry me at all, because i know you're painfully upfront about things. The ones I have a problem with are those who only want their own beliefs protected, but want the right to excercise 'freedom of speech' about everyone else. They go after you too? Bastards (I saw what Bery did). Lets take-em down together. They give y'all a bad name, and if you don't speak up people will think they speak for you, same way the general population won't know what to think of Pagans if all they hear is the weirdo GlytterSong MoonBeame "I'm half faery and can turn you into a frog!" morons.

A "pune"??

(and yeah, I got the "pune")

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"Said I never had much use for one, never said I didn't know how to use one!"~ Matthew Quigley

"nothing like a little meow in bed at night" ~ Bruskey

"I gotta float my stick same as you" Hondo Lane

"Fill your hand you son of a *****!"

Yes, that's what happens when people who take their religion way too seriously are allowed to set policy based on it. Next thing you know they're deciding who is the wrong flavour of their religion and who isn't devout enough. That's what I'm afraid of.

I personally don't give a flying **** what religion you practice. Even if it's painting Disney characters on your body, and running around naked in the moonlight comparing your Midi-chlorian count and waiting for the arrival of the Chosen one. Although that one does sound kinda interesting. The point is, if you make a post about it in General, I just want everyone to treat it with the same respect they would want their own thread treated with. I don't care what you do in Hellfire, but have a little courtesy in General. Mmmmkay?

And...

/hugs Lenas

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"I Live, I Love, I Slay, and I Am Content."
- Conan the Barbarian

I tried to be clear, I, at least, am not shitting on you. I think that the situation could have been handled better if you hadn't wussed out, though, and I'm pointing it out so that you can improve as a moderator.

If you had done what you did, in addition to tossing out 3-5 warnings (yes, I'm saying go ahead and warn both sides, because people were responding in kind), the matter probably would have ended there, the Christians wouldn't feel that the disrespect to their holiday had been tacitly condoned, and we probably wouldn't run into this kind of thing next *insert celebratory thread here*, because people would have learned that we are, actually, encouraging people to be nice to one another, and punishing them for not doing so. In addition, Bery wouldn't have started THIS shitstorm of a thread calling out your impotent semi-moderation, and stirring up all the **** between him and the people he regularly chastises and judges, to the point of him getting completely out of hand and getting himself banned.

Again, that's not to say that I'm blaming this whole fiasco on you -- there are many participants, each contributing in their own fashion. I'm trying to pound it into all the moderation team's head, along with the Administration that you guys have a responsibility here that you're really screwing the pooch on, and showing you how you're letting it happen.


I haven't noticed anybody suggesting Taly should resign (well, I take that back, as I hit the next page, whatever). At most, all I've suggested is that she not use her position as a moderator to flame and belittle people's beliefs from a standpoint of impunity -- because, let's face it, if we can't get the mod team to warn or discipline normal posters, what are the chances of anything happening to another mod? Sure, they go around crying, "Don't be dicks to one another! Be friendly and get along!" and then one of them shits on the most holy event in several people here's lives, IN THE THREAD THAT WAS CELEBRATING IT!

This isn't the first time Talya made an off-color joke regarding the Jesus. And it probably won't be the last, nor should it be. I don't get all up in her face about it when she does it in Hellfire discussions, or random threads (much like, say, Coro has appropriated the "RACISM! JESUS!" thing, which is probably on a similar level of sacrilege if you're making judgement calls on that sort of thing -- but he's got the good sense enough not to do it in threads where we're trying to celebrate our faith quietly and modestly).

And, no, it wasn't more than asshattery. It was, specifically, however, the asshattery known as flaming/flame-baiting, because it was belittling people with its implicit tone and timing.

I don't think Christians are asking for special treatment. Bery, in particular, pointed out -- he thought there was a cease-fire for all religious celebrations. We're upset that that's been violated, and I'm upset because it's a terrible precedent to set, particularly because I know a bunch of people (I suppose one of them is gone, now) don't look too highly on some of the minority religions here, either, and I'm not particularly interested in this community falling apart over a Wiccan holiday, either.


I agree with everything in here, it's what I've been saying -- except for the part that what Lenas did was fine. Again -- you're telling us not to do stuff, and then, when somebody does it.. What happens? Nothing. What incentive, then, is there, for us to listen to you? If you don't enforce rules, there are no rules, no matter how hard you cry about people not following the rules you don't enforce. CHANGE THIS. Things will then improve.

It was never "all about" Monte. He was just the prime example of somebody who couldn't stand following the rules, and who was in the habit of baiting people to likewise break them, too. If rules had been enforced better (to the point of him actually having respect and faith that he would be thrown out for his repeat violations), he might even have improved.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Man, all ya'll need to chill out. Why so serious all the time?

Where did people's sense of humor go?

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"I've got twenty ways to tell you shut the f*ck up / nineteen of them are twenty-four bars long / the other one goes: SHUT THE F*CK UP" - Aesop Rock
"There is no God higher than truth." -- Gandhi
Formerly: Tulamian

since we're all getting offended and jumping on the anger wagon i'd just like to add a list of things for future references that you should not talk about negatively on this board or I will be offended and hunt you down or something.



I will post more as I think of them =P

One, that isnt your place. Two, Lenas did fine. Three, turn it sideways and stick it up your candy *** with the "responsibility" and "screwing the pooch". The responsibility is on the posters here to be civil. Dont put it on the mods to magically make this place full of rainbow shitting unicorns in a 16 page thread of yelling, and dont think you know how to moderate from the sidelines. We've had two people banned, Talya was removed as mod over this latest incident. That's a lot in a small group of long time posters. Keep at it and more people will be gone.



If you read through this thread you can see what a monumental task it would be to police everyone here. I'm also not incentivizing baiting people into breaking the rules, people reporting every little thing based on their nuanced version of the rules, complaining about who is doing what and who is getting away with what. There are far too many people here who act like babies and brats for me to feel compelled to say "Yeah just report it if you see something you dont like!" It'd be an ocean of red !'s. The Glade has been around long enough that people know each other and should be able to be civil. If you can't, well...

If you're a reasonable person (oh God), and you see something egregious, yeah report it. If you're just going to get into arguments and report each other though forget it, maybe one of the other mods will deal with you.

Hellfire you can all run amok. If it spills into other forums you do that at your own risk.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

If we were reasonable people, we wouldn't be creating threads that turn into shitstorms that get locked, and we wouldn't be speweing 16 pages of **** afterwards (this is, by the way, only my third post in these 16 pages) involving a ban, because obviously the lock was sufficient.

But, you know what? Whatever. I'm done. I've got IM contacts for most of the people I need to talk to. I don't need to put up with an unmoderated cesspool. Because that's what this place has become.

I'm not leaving because somebody posted in a religious thread, either. I'm leaving because nobody's maintaining any decency around here about *anything,* and whining about our behavior instead.

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"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

You're right. I hope you enjoy your forums, Dashel; because, apparently, somewhere along the way it ceased to be our place.

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Well, yes, as a matter of fact they DO go after me too. Bery's been after me for quite a while now here but, for example, I can hardly go a week in the summertime without having me or my wife or daughter approached at the city playground by some local evangelical youth group wanting to know if we want to go to their church - because, obviously anyone in the park not wearing a button-down long-sleeved shirt and khakis or an ankle-length skirt must be an unsaved heathern, or addenting some "non-biblical" church, like a (gasp) Lutheran! One wonders where they think Sola Scriptura came from in the first place.

While I can't say I know of any Christians having their houses burned or pets mutilated, I have seen people ridiculed for their faith, for openly wearing a cross, and I've seen plenty of non-Christians of all stripes who feel that everyone needs to know their opinion on how awful Christianity or religion in general is regardless of the approriateness of the setting.. such as for example, in my TOC. It never ceases to amaze me that what counts as "ramming Christianity down someone's throat" is perfectly ok for any other belief system.

That said, there are 2 separate issues here:

1) This board. No one here is calling for any special protected status for Chrsitianity or any other topic. What people are calling for is that, like any other topic, the controversial aspects stay in Hellfire/Heckfire and the "yay it's Easter" type stuff in the General forum be left alone. This is not asking for special protection; it's asking that Christianity not be singled out for this treatment. Bery is gone now so hopefully we'll be spared any more ninja evangelism. As for Taly and TheRiov, I thought taly's behavior was silly and immature but relatively minor; the main problem I see is that if TheRiov wanted to discuss some controversial topic it was apparently too much **** effort to go make a new topic in THIS forum. How asking people to make a new topic int he approriate forum is asking for any special consideration is totally beyond me.

2) Real life Freedom of Speech. I understand perfectly that it irritates you that some people want THEIR freedom of speech protected but don't want YOURS protected. However, trying to reverse this and tell them they should shut the **** up with their hatefulness while still inisisting on your own rights is no more tenable a position. Freedom of Speech is Freedom of Speech; it only stops when it moves into the realm of directly inciting people to violence.

So, given that neither your nor their freedoms are going to be taken away because they offend the other, the only realistic option is to NOT respond by antagonizing them right back. (I'm not necessarily speaking of you personally here; I've heard Pagans; maybe it was even you complain about other Pagans who want to do nothing but sit around and ***** about Christians at any sort of event)

However, to use you as an example, you apparently don't like it when people say "God Bless" to you. Ok, but then if you don't like that why would you say "Blessed Be" in return? If you're saying it as just an innocuous habit, ok fine, but why would you see them saying their greeting any differently? Frankly I find it a little annoying when people say "God Bless" as a daily greeting too because it strikes me as using the Lord's name rather thoughtlessly, but I don't see it as some sort of problem because I choose to stick with "hello" and "goodbye".

Or to take another example, if someone invites you to their church you evidently say "No thanks I'm a Pagan". That's pretty much just rubbing their noses in your beliefs; not because you mean it that way but simply because you already know what they think of those beliefs and give them that extraneous information when "no thanks" would suffice. I happen to know this because when dealing with Evangelicals "no thanks I'm a Lutheran" or in the case of my in-laws "No thanks, we're Catholic" merits the same sort of response you get, albeit probably at lesser intensity. That's why I don't say "I'm a Lutheran" any more; they don't need to know that.

Now, sometimes they want to have a conversation about it, and depending on how polite they are when they ask "why don't you want to?" they might get a resposne that ranges from "Because I have a church" or "Because I'm a Lutheran" to "Because I **** well said so; do you just automatically assume everyone you meet doesn't go to church, *******?"

The point I'm getting at here is that if you want a modicum of consideration for your beliefs, you need to give it in return. There are going to be some docuhebags on both sides that refuse to do that, but using them as an excuse not to give it to anyone just lumps you in with your own douchebags. I fully understand that you may get treated shabbily at times for your beliefs, but everyone does.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

We blew it up with Tomahawks and ESSMs 2 pages ago.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Really? I'm the biggest villian here? wow.

I think that robbing someone of free choice (which brainwashing children is tantamount to) is every bit as offensive as some of you think other things are.

No, you were just the second biggest asshoel in that thread. Let's not flatter ourselves, shall we?



That's fascinating. However, teaching children something is not "robbing them of free choice" and young teenagers are certainly old enough to understand what their religious beliefs are all about well enough to make a committment. They can always change that committment later in life if they want to.

Referring to it as "brainwashing" is A) use of predjudicial language fallacy B) is essentially a veiled way of saying "I think they shouldn't be taught this so that there will be a better chance they won't believe in it, which is what I want for other people's kids" and C) is a complete misuse of the term "brainwashing". Brainwashing someone is a concerted effort to replace their normal thoughts and development with an artificial one, such as what was done to some soldiers captured by North Korea.

Comparing normal religious techings and practices to North Korean brainwashing techniques is absurd, and really reveals a great deal about your hostility to beliefs you don't share. Pre-teens and teenagers are not small children unable to understand religious concepts. They're certainly able to understand it at least as well as the political issues they dicuss in school, where children of that age are often asked to conduct mock elections and discuss issues in more depth than "X is good any Y is bad". Portraying this as "brainwashing" is simply asinine.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Oh it's your forums, and it is what you've all made it.

You all can blame me as much as you want. All I'm hearing from this section of the forums is "why wont someone do something about us?" You want it to be about moderating, then when people moderate you want to tell them they did a **** job. I just skimmed the mod forums and it's got plenty of examples of complaints about which mod did what. I can also recall at least one instance where DFK! warned Monte for "publicly undermining the moderation". We had people cry it was all Monte, just ban Monte, why the **** wont you ban Monte I hate you all I'm going to cut myself and listen to My Chemical Romance. Same with Bery. Looking back, having it all be about Monte was the good old days. Now that he's gone everyone needs a new scapegoat.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Dashel:

Now you're projecting. I responded to a very specific statement you made to Kaffis about his questioning the viability/consistency of moderation on these boards. Indeed, the hostility you directed at Kaffis was neither necessary nor production, as it has caused yet another person to depart our community. Instead of simply glossing over his complaints, you could have considered them and engaged him in an even handed dialogue. You, however, chose to attack him for voicing his opinion in a well-reasoned and tonally neutral manner. And your behavior, as one of the administrators, speaks to a larger problem than anything else in this thread.

Did TheRiov do something stupid in the original thread? Yes. Did Taly do something stupid in the original thread? Possibly, but most likely. Were they the original offenders in that thread? No. Do people need a scapegoat? Not really. I came down on Beryllin because he levied the original insult to Easter; and he did so intentionally and and in a duplicitous manner. But, no one excused Taly or TheRiov because of Beryllin's behavior. Rather, Beryllin did a number of despicable things while using their behavior as a shield/raison d'etre and the forum responded to him with their opinions.

You, on the other hand, attacked Kaffis for voicing, yet again, a sentiment many of us share: moderation is haphazard and inconsistent. This leads to a lack of clarity of rules and guideliness; this leads to behavior that while questionable is neither enforceable nor recognizably disallowed. And, yes, you did set a rather questionable precedent by publically chastising DFK! for reporting what he felt were personal attacks and negative behaviors by Taskiss in the Heckfire! Forum.

So, while we all appreciate whatever monetary and temporal investment you have put into providing a stable forums, many of us have to question the management practices as presented to those of us who cannot see the Mod Forums.

I for one question the viability of Heckfire when it not moderated as stated.

I for one question the viability of moderation when it does not take time to explain its decisions or uniformly enforce rules.

And, amazingly, I think the majority of posters feel the same way. Moderation almost always appears capricious to someone, but good moderation has a body of work to defend itself against that claim. And good moderation will entertain, without anger, hostility, or violations of its own reasons, reasonable questions concerning those decisions.

Core members of these forums have stopped communicating; the community aspect of these forums continues to deteriorate; factionalism and hostility continues to rise ...

Lots of stuff can contribute to this trend; it may very well be incurable. But I can tell you this: inconsistent moderation will only act as an accelerating agent. And an Administrator that openly castigates and engages posters in a hostile manner is simply more fuel.

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Khross, you're giving quite a generous interpretation to that post. Being a mod sucks, I typically enjoy reading Kaffis posts for instance but now I'm forced to argue with him because of all this nonsense. I personally dont care how well reasoned and tonally neutral you phrase "wussed out", or call out someone who didnt do anything wrong, it's still crap. Further, his argument was to toss out some warnings so people wouldnt feel this stuff was tacitly condoned. Finally I see what looks to be a call for Taly to resign. Now perhaps I should apologize to Kaffis for being so perfunctory but let me lay this out first so we're clear because it seems we are not:

In this latest ****, you had both a direct personal warning to one individual by me and several general warnings by both Moo and myself about being civil and respecting each other. I think we made it clear the remarks were not acceptable. That the warnings and comments werent in pretty red font is irrelevant. You had one long time poster permanently banned. You had Micheal issue several warnings in blue, you had Lenas in there to try and diffuse the situation, then lock it when people continued on until we could sort it out. You also had one moderator removed because of this so the call for resignation is moot too. So to sum up of the three people involved initially, one banned, one warned directly and one removed as mod. I believe that covers all the grievances so I feel justified in getting pissed when someone calls out a guy trying to help. Of all the people here Moo, Lenas and Michael do the best job at moderating. You want to bash me fine, I've probably made it harder for them, but they are doing a good job none the less.

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“Strong people are harder to kill than weak people, and more useful in general”. - Mark Rippetoe

Dashel:

I'm not bashing you; neither, for that matter, was Kaffis. If you could see that, we might actually be able to have a discussion on the value and purpose of moderation.

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Do you think this is the time or the venue to renew that discussion?

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In time, this too shall pass.